Warmth

Blue-green waves lapped up against the sun-warmed sand, frothing slightly around the point where solid and liquid clashed. Joe looked down at his toes, bright orange in the deflected sunset light, and wiggled them.
“What are you doing?” A harsh, high-pitched voice broke into Joe’s thoughts and dragged him reluctantly back into reality. He turned to face the voice.
The sand led back calmly to the edges of a palm tree fringe. Tall scalloped trunks reached up into the deep blue sky, topped with massive dark green fronds that swayed languidly with height not wind.
It was, all in all, an idyllic desert island. The affect was spoilt only by the metallic gash across the beach that led to the mangled pile of debris that had been their transport. And the leaping, shouting, bloodied form of Joe’s companion.
Pwjlk was finding the sand too hot to stand on so was hopping from one of his four feet to the next in strict rotation. In consternation and anxiety Pwjlk was waving his two upper arms in the air while his two lower arms clasped and wrangled each other. The crinkled, layered face was beetroot red against the pale yellow of its skin and the single eye was stretched wide and unblinking.
“What are you going to do?” Pwjlk screeched again.
Joe sighed. He looked back out again to sea but there was nothing there. Only the faint streak of black smoke vapour trail in the sky remained to signify where they had come from.
Pwjlk hopped awkwardly down to the ocean’s edge, sinking slightly into the wetter sand but finding no relief in the relative coolness there. He looked up at Joe from his full metre high height. Joe patted him on the head and Pwjlk flinched.
“We wait.” Joe said simply. “We wait and see what comes next.” He started trudging back to the wreck of the ship.
“What if ‘they’ come?” Pwjlk yelped, running after Joe and pulling at the shredded remains of his jumpsuit.
“Then they come. We can’t do anything about it if they do.” Joe paused and frowned in thought. “Well, maybe we can see what survived the crash. You never know. We might get lucky.”
“Hmph.” Said Pwjlk. “Not likely though is it.”
Joe smiled. At least a cynically grumpy companion was better than a panicking one.
The wreck was still smouldering and Joe grimaced, remembering the instant of impact before they had started their enforced descent, searching through the still hot metal for anything that might be salvageable. He still couldn’t work out what had happened, what it was that had hit them and brought them so abruptly down. He did know that they had been in the middle of nowhere, looking down upon an unbroken expanse of blue ocean. So this island had been a very lucky occurrence. A chance in a million. His stomach knotted with the bitter sensation of disquiet. It was too much of a coincidence wasn’t it.

Colour

Light scores the horizon. The sky is a faint grey bleeding to the palest of blues.  The promise of a clear Winter morning. I let the net curtain fall back over the condensation-edged window.

I fill the kettle with water and click it into its dock, flicking it on. The kitchen side is cluttered with dirty cups and plates. The old, laminated surface bubbles with age and damp at its edges. Brown stains reach through the black and white pattern in the plastic. The curling grind of the kettle slowly joins the stereo hum of the boiler and fridge.

Raising the curtain again the sky is lighter. Grey is the wrong colour. It is white, but not yet bright enough to be true white. On the edges of the roofs and walls the snow takes on the luminescence of the sky, reflecting it with a deeper, crystalline blue.

Winter Hunt

A melody of snowflakes plays across the large cockpit window. The Captain steps from around the wheel, passing control with a touch on his First Mate’s shoulder, moving forwards into the bubble frame of the window. Some of the snow catches and melts against the glass, some sticks in little piles. Beyond the flickering white leaves there is only the dark, grey sky. To the Captain’s senses the rest of the world has disappeared. Only their instruments tell them where they are.

The Captain sighs, lightly, rubbing a finger along his forehead, wiping at the irritation where the band of his cap clings tightly.

“How are we suppose to find anything in this?” He asks. Neither the First Mate nor the navigator bother to answer. Each just keeps their eyes focused on the panels in front of them. “Sergeant.” He calls out.

A young, squat man with dark hair and a scar running along the side of his face, distorting its natural and beautiful symmetry, enters through the heavy door that passes joins the cabin to the rest of the command gondola.

“Sir?” The Sergeant asks.

“Fetch me the passenger. Tell her we are in need of her assistance.”

The sergeant does not stop to ask which passenger, even though there are more than twenty civilians and a small platoon of Red Army soldiers on board. Only one would be summoned to see the Captain and only one is a woman.

Bees (7)

MICROFT was built without the ostentation and affections I gave to HOLMES. He is a tool of the government and, although I designed his brain, I gave him a more serious practicality than my own detective. With the Home Office scientists helping me it seemed harder to justify gimmicks such as the metal face and pipe for expelling excess steam like a man deep in thought. Instead, MICROFT’s pipes are tucked away behind panels and lead away, dispelling the effluence of the computer into dark sewers nearby.

I know that since I first built him, and further developed him in the war years of 1914 and 15, he has been expanded and enhanced by the team of younger men dedicated to him. I am, however, unprepared for the extent of the change. Bigger, I knew. The small screen fixed with simple brass bolts to his surface was something new. I had heard of the technology, a television, but had never seen it. On the grey, snowy screen the features of a stern, jowly old man peer out from an over-size white moustache; the very picture of English sensibility. The figure grins at me and I realise with a start that this is MICROFT. A speaker, hidden behind a delicate wooden grill, crackles and the familiar, deep voice spills into the room.

“Watson, my dear fellow” He says. “It’s good to see you. How long has it been? Ten years? Fifteen.”

I nod, still slightly in awe.

“Things have changed, eh?”

“They certainly have. I’m not as young as I used to be,” I say, shaking the cane in demonstration of my fragility. “And you have certainly grown.”

It offers a small bark of a laugh. This is a device well beyond the primitive imaginings of HOLMES and I find it slightly terrifying.

“Your new face is particularly remarkable.” I say.

“Indeed. I felt it would help me project a more human, trustworthy air for our masters. Sometimes I felt that they would not take my suggestions as seriously as those of a person in a suit.”

“I would have thought your successes in Germany would have been enough.”

“Memories are short. And the dangers are greater than ever. This is why I’ve asked for you, Watson. I fear that it is only you that can help me now.”

Summer

Rock encrusted with dead grass and moss. Dry, brittle, a tired, old scene of late summer, the harsh buzzing of insects, the heat heavy on the soil. Brakeman leans over the wooden fence and pulls the flask of warm, brackish water to his lips. He sips gratefully and with a grimace, his lips and tongue flickering like a pale amphibian to stop any of it escaping.

His throat feels like it will work again and he coughs, gently.

"What are you doing?" He asks.

The boys stare at him, a mixture of awe and fear. Brakeman is the stuff of their nightmares, fed up on half-heard tales of vengeance whispered amongst the older kids.

UFO

The first feeling I get is one of inquiry, a gentle interest like that of a Buddhist monk looking to understand the world that is in front of him by simply sitting and watching. Then the lights start to move away, a spiralling and intricate dance leaving a smell of dying autumn leaves. They shrink, briefly illuminating the clouds, and suddenly disappear in the dark sky to leave only after-images, the fading false glow of memory.

The sight has been increasingly common, reported on local news channels across the world, but it is still dismissed by the major nationals, apart from Fox who have run it as a nut piece. No-one understands it yet, no one has thought about it enough yet. The truth is, people seem unwilling to really acknowledge that it might be real. Fear, I guess, keeps it hidden in plain view. Despite all those films the truth we all know is that alien invaders would win. Apple computers, cold viruses and good, old-fashioned, human ingenuity will not win us a war against creatures so advanced that they could probably just wipe the planet clean of life and start again if they chose.

Johan's long, heavy face is dark and angular in the bare, red lighting of the pod. We are hanging in space, nearly a kilometre from the <<la terre sans la ciel>>, only a thin but incredulously strong cable tethering us to the bulk of the space craft.

Flickering on the glass the image of Saturn fills our vision, overlaid with real-time infrared pictures of the aurora. It is beautful but incredibly unnerving to watch. The blue streaks reach out, sketches of magnetic waves that should not be behaving in this way, red hexagonal shapes below mapping out the nothern pole of the planet with an alien isometric view. None of it looks real.

I wave my hand over the overlay, and begin twitching my fingers to pull up files and videos from half a century's worth of compiled data on this phenomenon. It flies over the screen in waves, from the earliest, laughably low rez videos of early probes and Earth-based scopes, through to the latest purpose-built flyby cameras. The maths underlines it all with records of patterns that should not be natural. This is not a view that Johan shares. Look at pulsars. He has said to me many times. Before we understood them they seemed to be messages from other civilisations, we couldn't imagine otherwise. But the truth is nature can produce very many strange and unusual things that we do not yet understand.

Even aliens, I mutter under my breath.

What? Johan asks.

I smile and shake my head. How are we doing? I ask. Time to get back yet.

Feeling exposed?

Hanging around like this? Yes, I feel exposed. I know we need to collect the data away from the ship to avoid interference from the drives, but do we really need to be here too?

Johan laughs. He is a much more physical kind of person that I am. He has to be here, I can sense that. Simply seeing this thorugh a camera would never be enough for him.